Chapel was built by Robert Dickinson in 1642, who left £200 'for a sufficient scholar, to read divine service there every Sunday and to teach school on weekdays'. Inscription over the church door states that the chapel was built and finished in 1642 at the proper cost and charge of Robert Dickinson, citizen of London, and born in Aldingham; Dickinson 'in his lyfe tyme hath given sufficient mayntenance for ever to a minister to have divine service read in the said chappell according to the Church of England & in the weeke day to have children brought upp in learning & taught therein to wch. God give his blessing' (VCH, 8, 327). According to Gastrell, by the early 1720s, 'This Chapel is now used only for a School'. According to VCH, the chapel was rebuilt and in 1776 consecrated, and rebuilt and enlarged in 1795. VCH, Lancs., 8, 327-8; Gastrell, Notitia Cestrienses, II.iii, 496-7.